Life Moves On
by merlintriss
Summary: Years after the death of the Great Dragon, life has moved on at the castle. Slight AU. What happnes when a couple visitors come?


Fanfiction

Reign of Fire

I don't' really know why I'm writing this, because I'm not an uber fan, and have probably forgotten some major details.

Okay, it's an AU where Creedy doesn't die (because, personally, I thought it was rather stupid of him to die, and Quinn still goes to the city with Alex and Van Zann and they kill the bull dragon) Everyone's moved on, and the dragons are diminishing from the skies.

And obviously, I don't own Reign of Fire, or any of the characters, etc, or else I wouldn't be writing fanfiction.

Life Moves On

It was in the early hours, and the castle was quiet. Drake was one of the few awake. Growing up under dragon skies had caused him to wake up early and go to the upper parts of the tower, if just to look out across the land. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, one of the little roll your own things he had made himself a while back. He lit the tobacco and let it smolder. Another one of the bloody habits he had picked up from the Americans.

The sun had just risen, casting orange light across the landscape. Except for the whole fire scorched thing, the land actually looked beautiful. Since they hadn't seen a dragon in months, tufts of grass had shot out of the parched ground.

A hand suddenly was on Drakes shoulder, and he jumped a little, until he realized it was Creedy. The older man smiled. It was like Drake to apprehensive about human contact. After all, the dragon threat would always be present in the minds of those who had never lived without the looming threat of being burned alive constantly hanging over your shoulder.

"So how are you doing boy?" he asked Drake, who had just flicked the cigarette away.

"Not bad," said the boy, looking out again on the landscape, "how come you're up so early?"

"You know Melissa, always has to be tossing and turning early in the morning," he smiled at the younger man again. Melissa was Creedy's girlfriend, I guess you could say, and the two spent a awful lot of time around each other, and they slept in the same bed near the stairs.

"That's why I'm always having my own bed," Drake proclaimed. Creedy laughed.

"That's what you say now boy, but you've never actually slept in the same bed as a woman, have you?" Creedy got a mischievous grin on his face, causing Drake instantly to understand.

"So how are things, you know, in the castle?" Drake asked, trying to get off the subject.

"You know, the usual. Jared's shaping up to be a regular leader. Not that Quinn's entirely out of the picture, but he's letting Jared take the reigns more often, you know. Like that whole French thing," Creedy grimaced, remembering the horribly long time it took for them to figure out how to properly talk to the French speaking people, only to find out they were truly out of reach in Canada. Needless to say, it sucked.

"And with your family?" Creedy said, looking down just in time to see the young man give a disgusted look on his face.

"Well, lets see," he started ticking off his fingers as he mentioned each one, "Emily's gone banana's over some boy she's never met, mother's pregnant again, father is still part of the harvest team, and David, well David's a year old, and still can't tell his blanket from a pair of knickers. " Creedy guffawed at this.

"Love your family son, they're all you have left to start a new beginning in this world," Creedy patted him on the back as he started for the door, "And don't forget, you are helping with the story tonight. We plan to do Aladdin. Remember that one?"

"How could I forget?" Drake smiled a little, "I guess I'm playing the monkey, right?"

"Yeah," Creedy left, leaving Drake alone with the distant panorama.

What do we do when were awake?

Keep both eyes on the sky

What do we do when we sleep?

Keep one eye on the sky.

What do we do when we see him?

Dig hard, dig deeper, run fast, and never look back.

Endlessly, as Drake sat alone, this verbatim rushed through his head, the litany they used to fill everyone's minds when dragon's still filled the skies. Quinn, the once leader of the castle was now sitting off to the side of everyone else with his wife, the American soldier Alex. Alex never looked to happy, even with Quinn around, and everyone knew it.

Drake concentrated harder on hi s food, because his sister had started to flirt with Brian again. Emily was practically sitting on his lap. It was disgusting. Though he was a teenager, he had never really found an attraction with anyone in the castle, mostly because he had grown up with them, and they would always be more like brothers and sisters than lovers.

He knew he was teased for it, not finding any of the girls really that attractive, but he would deal with it. Someday, maybe not so long away now that the dragons were no longer as large a threat, he would find someone outside of the castle, outside his makeshift family.

His mother always said he was a dreamer. No one left the safety of the shelters, even though the dragons had become rarer. They couldn't help it. Sometimes, just going out of site from the castle would bring out the litany again, only this time, it would be delivered in a pure Quinn monotone, and you would instantly think of dragons and screaming, and of that one little girl he had known a long time ago who had burst into flames. No one could really forget the deaths, so no one ever left.

Little Beth ran out from under the table and crawled into Drake's lap, causing him to shift the chair back so she didn't knock the spoon from his hands. She sat there, with her knees on his, looking into his eyes with her little blue ones and smiling, then planted a kiss right on his nose. Suddenly, some of the attention in the room shifted painfully to him.

"Drake," she said in her little four year old voice, "Will you marry me?" She smiled, kissing him on the nose again. This time, it was accompanied by a giant guffaw in the direction of Creedy's table, and a few hearty laughs from some of the women who couldn't help but feel happy for the girl's childish love.

"Maybe when you're older, sweetheart, maybe when you're older," he said, turning her around and putting her on the floor. She turned around and looked at him, again with the blue eyes.

"You will marry me Drake. I know it," and with that, she sauntered off. Drake went back to his food before anyone could make a comment.

Two months later

It was during the middle of the day when the Irish came. Drake was, as usual, standing on the castle walls, looking down, when he found himself peeking off into the distance. That was when he noticed a band of people, huddled together, constantly searching the day lit sky, coming towards the castle.

He quickly sounded the alarm.

All the men in the castle took to the walls, and looking down over them at the newest people in the area. They were a little band of people, mostly skinny, underfed people, who could probably use a good shower and a bite to eat.

"What do you want in these parts?" Jared shouted over the wall at the refugees.

"Well, sir, we're from across the way, and we don't have much to offer, but we seek a place to spend the night," a thick man yelled from down below. He was a firey red head, and those who could remember the differences between accents, noticed him immediately for Irish. Out of all the folk, he was the most decent looking, and the largest, obviously a patriarch.

"I don't know, sir," Jared shouted back, "How do we know you won't come up here and try to take the castle?"

"Take the castle?" the man shouted back dumbfounded, "With what? Me ladies and a spoon," he sounded a little angry, "You know what, I don't even think I have a spoon."

Jared suddenly got up as Quinn approached, followed closely by Alex. Even though Jared was the leader, Quinn was still in charge.

"I don't know what to do," Jared hissed across the short distance, "They're obviously refugees, but I don't want to just let them in."

"Yeah, you know, last time we let in a couple of people from the outside, Quinn ended up getting hurt, we met Alex, and a dragon attacked," a man said from the crowded wall.

"We also ended the future of dragon kind," Alex spoke up for what seemed like the first time in months.

"Let them in Jared," Quinn said, attempting to make a suggestion, but utterly failing, "And if your conscious is what's bothering you, put a little security detail on them until you're sure it's okay"

"A detail," Jared rolled that around unfamiliarly before nodding his head, "Okay, you Drake," he said pointing at the boy, "and um, Nick," this time at a brutish looking man with a thick beard and a strong body, "and how about Holly for safe measure?" this time he pointed at a thin little wraith of a woman who had lived on the outskirts of London for a few years after the attack before finding her way to the castle.

"It's your call," Quinn said quietly.

"Okay, raise the gates, let in the visitors, and let's find out what they want," Jared shouted at the people down at the gate, who immediately raised it. The security detail split off from everyone else.

"I don't know about this," Holly said softly, shaking her short blonde hair, "We shouldn't trust outsiders." Drake snorted.

"And what are you, exactly?" Nick asked her, "You just popped in here two months ago, and suddenly you're no longer an outsider."

"Besides," Drake suddenly said softly, "the only one out of us three who isn't an outsider here is me, and that's because I was practically born here."

"Hell," Holly snorted, "You could say me and Nick here had ourselves a spiritual rebirth." She snapped her head up and looked out at the incoming visitors.

"Looks like," Nick took to identifying the people, "Four men, or should I say two boys and two men, and about six women, ranging in age between mid teens to late fifties." Drake was surprised. He couldn't even tell if they were male or female yet, could barely discern the fact that they were human. Each person was covered in thick pelts, necessary if they crossed the channel between England and Ireland, and hiked the rest of the way here. Northwards, it wasn't exactly hospitable.

Finally, the patriarch made his final approach up the narrow rocky entranceway, and through the steel gate. He cast a worried glance about before continuing into the castle courtyard. (now more of a rocky, barren piece of land) The other's huddled together after them, except for a single teenage girl, who walked proudly behind the patriarch.

"I would save those eyes for some other place boy," Nick growled a little at Drake, who jumped out of his trance long enough to realize he had been ogling. Nick's grayish hairs speckling his beard meant two things. One, he was old enough to call Drake boy, and two, he was old enough to have gained a certain amount of respect for staying alive for so long.

"Sorry sir," he mumbled before following the two older fighters into the main area of the castle. There, the 'guests' were being 'greeted' by those inside. And that meant, they stood in the middle of a crowd that could be called threatening by some measures. Most of the people inside remembered the last time a visitor had come, and that arrival had shortly thereafter precipitated the attack of a male dragon.

"Well, we have certainly received a warm welcome," the patriarch said gruffly, immediately noticing the hostile atmosphere, "Is this how you treat all of your guests?"

"We don't get guests that often, and most of the time, they're not that friendly," Creedy spoke up from the crowd.

"What, marauders?" spoke up one of the men from the newcomers group.

"That, and Americans," Creedy replied.

"Bloody Americans," the patriarch hissed under his breath.

"We have an American here," spoke up Alex from the back, "And I don't think I'm that bloody at all."

"Well, you don't look to bad yourself, madam," the patriarch called congenially.

"We still don't know your name," Jared spoke up from the front of the castles occupants.

"And who are you, boy? You hardly look old enough to have grown a beard," the patriarch said probably sharper than he should have. Quinn looked about ready to jump in, but Alex stopped him.

"Really?" Jared walked soundly up to him, careful not to stand on his toes like David looking up at Goliath, "Well, I suppose you'd be more welcome inside, because I'm the unofficial leader round these parts. Do you seem to have a problem with that?" Jared asked with more background than he ever seemed to have previously.

"Apologies, sir, for my fathers abruptness. The only people we've dealt with besides you are marauders and Scottish highlanders," the proud girl spoke up to Jared, "We're not used to having much of a welcome anywhere."

"Jeanette's right. No one we've met so far has been kind enough to offer us a place to stay, that is until you folk," the patriarch said softly, this time without a trace of clan."

The newcomers were then welcomed without about as much welcome as a hermit gives to trespassers, and though the treatment was not warm, they hardly seemed to care, as long as they had a place to stay. The three members of the guard escorted them to a closed off segment of the main entrance, where a couple of beds were left over from that final dragon attack.

The castle's occupants had since learned the names of those who traveled with Eric and Jeanette. All were Irish, except a woman so short, it was understandable that Nick had originally thought of as a child. Her name was Manami Toyoda, and she was Japanese, apparently a visitor of Eric's before the attacks, who had since been unable to return to Japan, and instead decided to stay with Eric, and to later become his second wife.

The other members of the party was a family of three, a father named Micheal Durham, and his two sons Dunn and Joseph. The elderly woman was Eric's mother, Lynn. The youngest woman was Jeanette's younger sister Kyra, and her best friend Vera. Vera's mother was also there, a petite graying woman by the name of Gerry. There was also a couple of women they picked up along the way, a Nicole Parish, and Aeryn Fitzgerald.

Manami quickly set up house in the derelict corner, tossing some old, worn travel blankets onto the beds, and separating the contents of each persons load onto separate cots. She was a housewife to make any Japanese woman proud.

Jeanette, the obvious peacekeeper of the group, found out where some of the food was kept, and managed to get some for her 'family.' All except Nicole ate the reasonable ration of food, though Manami donated half of hers to Dunn, who was looking a little pale. Eric and the other men then set out to talking amoungst themselves, an activity that the women promptly ignored. All was normal in the little corner, at least for them.

Holly and Nick mainly kept watch, exchanging drags on a cigarette, though neither would admit they liked the flavor. Drake kept finding excuses to get closer to the group, but every time he did, Nick would call him off in an attempt to postpone the inevitable. It was obvious that the young man was interested in Jeanette, which was surprising since there had been questions about his sexuality, though these were carefully not discussed in public. Drake seemed honestly interested in one person, something that had never happened as far as they knew.

Finally, once the night had finally come to a close, and most of the castles occupants had shuffled off to their own beds, Quinn, with Jared and Creedy, came to talk to the traveled group.

"My name's Quinn, and you already met Jared," he pointed at the last man, "and Creedy. We three are the unofficial government around here, and we have some questions, if you'd be obliged to answer." Quinn's voice was congenial, but it was obvious that the tone brooked no argument.

"Ask away, Quinn," Eric said, with an almost identical tone, from years of taking management of his 'clan.'

"Why are you here?" Creedy asked, "Conditions here are almost identical to those up North, except maybe a few degrees warmer."

"The boys and I," he waved his hand around distractedly, "have been noticing that the dragons are becoming scarcer, so we decided to move on. We were living in a abandoned street car below ground, figured this place was as good as any," he smiled, "Besides, it was closer than France."

"Okay," Jared started, and Quinn was about to interrupt, but Jared didn't notice, "Are you on your way somewhere?"

"Not really, just decided to keep on the move. One of the boys suggested Switzerland, said it wasn't hit as hard by the nukes the government dropped to rid the earth of dragons, but I'm not sure if we can cross the English channel the same way we did the last channel," Eric shook his head.

"And how was that?" Quinn butted in.

"Well, once, when I was a wee lad, I took a course in survival techniques. Our teacher was an authentic Native American, from the continent, and he taught us how to build canoes. At the time, I just thought it was a cool summer project. Without those canoes, I would have never attempted to cross the channel to England. Would've tried to outlast them another year in and Irish winter."

"You won't have to outlast them much longer," Alex said softly. She had padded softly to behind Quinn.

"What does she mean?" Eric demanded of Quinn, who looked a little quieted about having to explain the events of the past.

"About two years back, an American," Eric looked cross at the word, "named Van Zann came, carrying with him loads of artillery. Had this great line about how he was a dragon hunter," Eric scoffed, "I know, I know. And how they had gotten across the Atlantic on some fixed up aircraft," at this, Eric's eyes turned to pure disbelief.

"Their territory, not ours," Eric mumbled, but Quinn caught it.

"That's what I said. But he said, it's my territory, it's your territory, its ours, they're just renting it for a while," Quinn shrugged.

"Hell of a line about hell on earth," Eric said, but Quinn continued over top him.

"Yeah, well anyway, he said, he and his team had come here to make their way to London to kill off the bull dragon. See they figured out," Quinn was about to continue, when Manami came over, interrupting him.

"That all the dragons are female except one, a bull dragon, the first dragon, who created all of the others," she smiled at Quinn's disbelief, "I was training to become a geneticist when I came to live with Eric, before the dragons. And once or twice, I did turn back to admire the plumbing."

"Yeah, well," Quinn continued after a pause, "he said he and his team were on their way to London, and he nearly killed me when I told him he couldn't have any of my men. Then we parted, and he went North and I stayed here. That was when the bull dragon came to this castle. See, he had attacked Van Zann's army trek, along with my wife, Alex here, who was overhead in a chopper," Quinn nearly chuckled this time at Eric's disbelief, "It's like I'm telling a fairytale, I know, but trust me for now. Anyway, the dragon killed some of our people, nearly got Creedy here," he motioned to his left where Creedy was sitting, "but we mostly survived in some of our underground caverns. When Van Zann went back, I went with him and Alex to London, and we went after the bull on his own turf. You should have seen London. It was like one of the ship graveyard, and it was covered with hundreds of dragons, that just exploded into the sky when the bull took flight. It was magnificent," he paused, "but, to make a long story short, we fought the bull, Van Zann died in a diversion, and killed the dragon with a arrow of TNT right in the mouth," he finished. After a pause, Eric started talking again.

"I believe you. I haven't seen these few dragons in the air in years, and I mean years. How else can I explain it? Manami knew it would happen eventually, that before the next male would hatch (she predicted about one in every million was a male) that if the dragon died, all the others would follow suit, live until they're old, never mate again, and die," this time Eric stopped.

They chatted a little while longer, but the conversation had deadened. Creedy, Jared, and Quinn left the newcomers to their own little corner, and headed off in their own separate directions. In fact, the only people who stayed, were members of the security detail, though Holly had curled up in a little blonde ball on the floor, and Nick was starting to doze as well. It wasn't that they were unsuitable for the job, it was that Drake had decided to take the first watch, and they were making sure they had enough sleep for the future.

He watched, with the infatuation of a teenage boy, as Jeanette prepared to go to bed. She didn't change clothes, or anything, but she made sure Dunn actually went to bed, instead of sneaking off to who knows where, and finally fixed up her own bed, with a giant quilt of browns and blues, a majestic and thick beauty. As he watched, herself unaware, she pulled something else out of the bag, something that glinted silver. He watched as, carefully, she put the little thing underneath the mattress, in between the slats of the bed.

Soon, all were asleep except for Drake and Joseph, who sat up in bed after the others started their own symphony of snores, and crept off out of the room. Drake quietly woke up Nick and followed Joseph out of the building, with the silence born of moving quietly at night in a crowded room.

Joseph was almost as good at navigating the castle as Drake was, which was saying something. He passed by small little doors that led off his course, and entered other doors, ones most people would have surely passed. Judging by his direction, Drake guessed he was going outside, and he must have had excellent memory to locate his way out of the labyrinth of small rooms and winding tunnels.

With a short jolt at one of the doors, Joseph made his way to the castle's walls, and stood there, inhaling the cool air that was inherent with England. Drake stood quietly at the door, careful not to move as to alarm his quarry, but afraid that Joseph himself had already noticed him. He was right.

"I suppose you followed me?" asked Joseph rhetorically, "I'm not surprised. We're new here, and you don't know who we are, or why we decided to stop here out of the other assuredly occupied places on the way?" he turned to look at Drake, "It's okay to ask, you know, because I actually know the answers." Drake navigated his way out of the shadows, and moonlight spilled onto him.

"I guess I want to know why you're here, yes," he asked, hopeful to know more about Jeanette.

"We're here because here is the only occupied place within miles," he looked back at him, "the only one. We have passed only one other place, and it was a small cave overlooking the ocean, and was only accessible by a small one person path that if you slipped on would lead you to a sure death," he smiled, "Eric said that it had once belonged to Irish monks escaping the Vikings, and that it was interesting that their ancestors, fleeing from another sort of tyrant, had found their way back to it, only to find it inaccessible to us."

"Well then, who are you?" Drake asked. He hadn't been close enough to here Creedy's small talk, and was sincerely curious.

"Well, I am Joseph," he laughed a soft, mirthless laugh, "We are survivors, except for the two ladies, from a loch around Dublin. Eric and his family, along with Manami, were vacationing there, were they owned some timeshare, and my family and Vera's was there as well. Well, our parents were anyway. Manami wasn't that old at the time, about eighteen, and she didn't bear Jeanette or Kyra. They were found along the way. Vera's really her mothers child, and the father was killed by a dragon a few years ago, along with my mom," his voice held only a shred of resentment, borne out by a hard life, "when they were examining an abandoned department store with hopes of finding something. Instead, a young dragon who had laired nearby flamed them."

Leroy Oscar Losanavitch was a survivor, and as we all know, survivors will live around anything. He had had a tough life, born a stringent Catholic in the areas around Ireland, and had traveled across the water in search of a single man. Of course, now that man was not alone, but that didn't matter. Leroy had a score to settle.


End file.
